The author's views are entirely his or her own (excluding the unlikely event of hypnosis) and may not always reflect the views of Moz.

When creating a product, website, or communication, including a simple user experience is key to success. The easier you make the A to Z process for a user, the more likely they'll be to accomplish the plan you spent time and resources putting together piece by piece.

In this week's Whiteboard Friday, Rand walks us through user experience and the actions that we can remove from our processes in order to drive more conversions, earn more links, get more social shares. Simplicity, FTW!

This week, we've added a still image of the whiteboard for easier viewing. Do you find this addition helpful? Let us know in the comments!

Video Transcription

"Howdy, SEOmoz fans, and welcome to another edition of Whiteboard Friday. This week I want to talk a little bit about user experience and the actions that we can remove from our processes in order to drive more conversions, earn more links, get more social shares. Let me show you what I'm talking about.

In this first example, embed codes, a lot of websites use embed codes all over the place. SlideShare is a good example. When you get to SlideShare, you find a particular presentation, and then you can copy and embed that onto your page.

Bitly is another good example. When you go to Bitly, they've got a little copy and paste sector. You paste in a link. It turns into the short Bitly link. You grab that out.

All sorts of things do this. YouTube does it. Vimeo does it. Any type of infographic that's embeddable, they all have these embed codes.

Embed codes are a phenomenal way to drive links, especially to content that people are likely to put on their own sites. The problem becomes when you make that a multi-step process. In fact, we've seen research and data from several sources now, saying that if you can make this a single click on here, and it says "copy to clipboard"' automatically, as opposed to popping something up like Bitly has started to do, or having to grab the entire embed code, Ctrl A, Ctrl C. I have to copy it myself, that actually will drive more embeds, meaning more links to the places you want with the anchor text that you want.

We remove an unnecessary step, that secondary piece, and make it so one click right in here with you cursor gets you copied to clipboard, a transitional message or a temporal message that pops up that says, "Copy to clipboard," or says below here, "Copy to clipboard." Now, all I have to do is paste, and I'm done. Very, very simple. Very easy.

Number two: Shorter, more action-oriented emails. We send a lot of emails. We send emails for outreach. We send emails that are in newsletter format that are trying to drive actions back to our websites. We send emails to try and get shares from our friends or our network, those kinds of things. All of these can be made more concise and more actionable. I see a lot of challenges when we sort of go, "Oh, I'm going to start with some nice fluffy introduction. Here's who I am. Here's more about my company. Oh, and now here, here is the final action. This is what I was actually trying to get you to do. I felt like for some reason I had to do all of this."

Email is a medium where heavy communication is great between people you already know, where there are lots of things to say, and you need to have that more complex dialogue. When it's between new people, between strangers, between someone you're reaching out to, I find that the most effective emails I ever get from an outreach perspective are, "Hey, Rand. Love what you're doing over there at Moz. Would you send this over to someone on your product team or someone on your marketing team?" Or, "Hey, we have this app that we think would be great for your events folks. Could you make an intro?" That is something I'm likely to do very, very quickly. Or, "Just check out this new app. It does this." Great. Really quick.

All the press release ones I get are like, "Such and such is a this type of company, and here's all of this. Here's their latest press release. They raised this round of funding. Would you be interested in writing about them or talking to their CEO on the phone?" Dude, all you have to do is have that CEO email me and be like, "Hey, man. I want to connect." I'll be like, "Hey, let's chat. Sounds good. Sounds interesting,"' if it actually does sound interesting. Shorter, more action-oriented emails.

Number three: Simpler sign-up forms. Oh, my goodness. You do not need to collect all of this data all at once. I need name. I need first name and last name. I've got to get this person's address, or at least the city and state they're in, because of this. You can collect so much of this data in the application later, as they're using it, if they're actually using it. You can collect some of that from IP address, location sensitive IPs, those type of things. You can tell the type of device they're on.

The thing is, as people browse the web more and more with mobile devices, this guy right here, when I'm on here, I absolutely hate filling out forms. The most I can ever do is an email and password field. A confirm password field really gets me going. It's just infuriating because it's a pain to type those extra letters, especially on something that doesn't have a full keyboard. If you can remove those and ask for that later, remember even if they get their password wrong and they forget it, you have still emailed them. You've got their email address, and you've sent them an email. It says, "Hey, click here to confirm." If they log back in, oh now the password is wrong or they forgot, great, you can fix that later, but you've gotten that initial essential sign-up. That's what you're looking for.

Number four: I know HTTP is a common protocol. So is GTTP, or at least I'd like to make it one. Get to the point with your content. Get to the point. A lot of the time, I see this stuff tweeted and shared on social networks, put on Inbound.org or Hacker News, where it says, "Hey, conversion rate testing shows that this performs better than that." Cool. Then, I have to scroll and scroll. Where is that? Oh, there's the test. There's that test they were talking about. It's way down deep in the content. I'm not exactly sure why, but a lot of times with blog content, with even infographics, with videos, with stuff that we should be sharing on the web and is good content, we're trying to say, "Here's what I want to tell you, and I'm prioritizing that for some reason above what you actually care about."

What you actually care about should be the primary and potentially only thing on that page. If you really have stuff that you want to tell me, I will go investigate. I'll check out your About page. I'll check out your product pages. I want to see what your company does because it sounds interesting. You've got a cool brand, and you've got a great blog post and that kind of thing. If you really must, you can put it down here below the stuff that I actually care about. I came to your site to watch a video I was told was awesome, to check out an infographic, to see, to learn something about a test, to figure out something, solve some problem. Deliver that to me upfront, please. That will not only make me more likely to come back to your site in the future. I'll have a positive brand association. I'll be more likely to share that content. Just a beautiful thing.

Number five: You actually see this a lot, and I see tremendous effectiveness when this is done, which is socially sharing links directly to what matters on the page or on an individual site. A lot of times, there will be a product tour section. Then, there's a video, a really interesting video or a demo. I'll see the social shares that are most effective are the ones that point directly. Sometimes, they have a JavaScript field in the URL that has a hash in it or a hash bang system or whatever it is. Those people who share direct do better than the ones who share the broad page. They've gotten into the process and dug around enough to share directly that piece that I care about. You can do this too.

In fact, I have recently seen a test where I essentially had been tweeting a link to something like where we were competing against another company for which company is better at this particular thing. I had been tweeting links to the page. Then you had to scroll down the page quite a ways, and then there was a little voting widget. Then I saw from the voting widget itself, there was actually some hash URL that would link directly to the voting widget on that page. When I tweeted that, it drove way more actions. In fact, like four or five times as many actions. I think something over 100 votes, whereas previously I had shared it a couple times and gotten like 15 or 20 votes from it. That is definitely a way to show that tweeting directly to the thing you want people to do, great way to socially share and to make those shares go further.

Last one, maintaining logged in state. Zappos, Amazon, all do this brilliantly well. Google actually does a pretty solid job of it as well. They maintain a logged in experience for as long as possible. Do you remember back in the day with Twitter? You used to get logged out all the time. They just weren't maintaining cookies and session variables and all that kind of stuff. You were losing your log in. You'd have to log into Twitter, even though you clicked that Remember Me button, you'd have to log in many, many times, every time you came back.

If you have this "Please log in" system here, and it does it even though you clicked "Yes. Please, remember me" down here, remember, please remember. Check. You're killing your conversions. I don't just mean conversions in terms of someone who makes a purchase. I mean someone who might have left a comment, someone who might have participated in your community, someone who might have shared something, someone who might have reached content they otherwise wouldn't have, someone who might have been a lead for you.

Moz actually did this. We have this as a conversion killer, and we can show the data. It was about 18 months ago, I think, that Casey and the inbound engineering team did a bunch of work to make sure, that most of the time, you're logged into your account. You wouldn't be logged out as quickly. I still find some challenges with it, but it's way better than it used to be. The data shows. You can see more comments per post view. You can see more people checking out and filling out their accounts. All that type of activity, that UGC that's driving long tail traffic, just a beautiful thing by maintaining this logged in state.

All of these are specific examples. The big takeaway message here is you don't need unnecessary steps. You don't need to be taking actions and requiring things of your visitors that they don't need to do, especially with the rise in mobile browsing and with the advantages that we've seen from web page speed increasing. We know, as web users and as people who build for the web, that visitors care tremendously about accomplishing tasks quickly. They're getting more and more used to it on their phones, on their desktops, on their laptops, on their tablets. We need to deliver that in order to be successful at marketing as well.

All right, everyone. Hope you've enjoyed this edition of Whiteboard Friday. We'll see you again next week. Take care."

So much information can be collected after signup is complete, as well. Sometimes, I just want to browse through a site to see if I even like it, but signup may be necessary for that. If their signup is unnecessarily long, I may take it as a reflection of the rest of the site's user experience and simply bounce.

Implementing login systems by social accounts is great, but I recently ran into a problem with this personally. Oftentimes, if you deactivate your FB (if you use that for signup), then signing into your account on a site will auto-reactivate your FB. If you remove the site's app from your FB account, then it might delete your account altogether (and delete any important information associated with that account) *cough* Spotify *cough*. Overall, social accounts signup is awesome, but it has some problems if someone wants to disconnect from that social network.

Okay. Great suggestion #1 for improvement. Something I’ve been working with video but using a slightly longer process in using a javascript open window box that shows all the code, including a link back to the page.

1. Click to see embed code, box opens. 2. Manually copy all code, not a simple one click to clipboard as in the case of the wistia code here.3. Paste

I can see the advantage in reducing the process by way of an automatic highlighted code appearing, but I wonder if that little box creates some confusion? Or maybe it's largely standard on the web today and most understand it? Any source to create the highlighted code? No WP here. Dreamweaver.

Question: Why isn’t SEOMOz doing it with a link to the page source in the embed code?Guess: They don’t need any more links…hehe

The snapshot of the board is a great add-on to the WBF usability, and it is nice Moz is implementing it exactly along with this Whiteboard Friday.

Finally... point 6 and SEOmoz: I must admit it still happens, at least in my case, and especially when I'm accessing the site from Mobile, which can be, as you say, quite annoying because delaying me when I'd like to comment or partecipate in the Q&A.

I recently made a some effort in to measuring the conversion rate of many buttons on my website. For some buttons, it was obvious why the conversion rate was bad, but there were still some gaps left. Thanks for giving some great tips so I can try fix those gaps.

As I do spring cleaning on my sites and client's sites, I think this is a great reminder - shorten the contact forms, make it easy to connect, move forward and don't stall.You know who does this well sometimes and terribly other? Forums. Sometimes you have to enter the username, email and password. That's awesome. I can fill in my profile later. Now that I'm a member. The ones that ask for your first, last, email, social media profile links, upload an 80x100 photo, firstborn's name, mother's maiden, social & cc details ... ok let me get ... outta here. K.I.S.S.

I like the visual for the whiteboard and it helps me to follow without having to use my x-ray vision to see through Rand. Good info to keep in mind for companies when conducting online marketing plans. Companies get caught up extolling the virtues of their services and forget the user is not actually interested in everything about your company.

+1 Great WBF randfish! Keeping the steps SIMPLE will totally increase conversions! I completely agree that shorter forms are better and once you have basic info, you can gather additional info later. Keep out the filler content and deliver the point!

I think the close up of the whiteboard is a great idea... please keep the rolling forward!

The idea of adding simplicity into site design reminds me of the most used service on the web. I have always looked at Google and thought to myself how it's massive white-space is actually the biggest draw. It forces you to look to exactly what you want from a search engine. A F****** SEARCH BOX! To me the internet best use has always been about finding the information I need quickly. This is not confined to just search engines, but on every webpage I visit. Rand hit's the nail on the head with this one. If websites stop cramming their pages full of useless self promotion and get to the point, users will start coming back more and more... I feel that simplicity somehow translates into transparency on the web in the users eye. This is pure speculation on my part but as a user myself I find that I enjoy the "simple sites" much more and frequent them to consume and share content often.

That's really a cool WBF again by Rand. I specially like the point of signup forms they are really long and forget about the cell phones i even hate filling up sign up forms when i am on my PC. I guess most of the websites do have login sessions just because of security reasons, may be you are logged in and you go out for a while without locking your system and someone else utilizes it they might use your account. Hmm well this is what i feel, but anyways i agree with other points mentioned by Rand.

Liked the concept of posting the picture of whiteboard discussion in the blog.

Great point on the persistent login. I agree with you, Rand, if there's something about the web I hate most, it's having to unnecessarily login even after requesting the site remember me. Moz used to be one of the sites that did this, so I'm glad you folks are addressing it!

Woww, kudos on this post!!! Such an excellent idea to put the still pic of the whiteboard so we can write it down prior to watching the video. I agree totally that shorter more action oriented emails (such as this WBF, which was very action oriented and got to the point very quickly)The only point i am still skeptic, is the GTTP Content. You comment that we should focus on writing what the people actually care about. The problem here is in almost every post, you get such a diverse audience, trying to please someone might ward off another reader. So, i think this point is very difficult to achieve in nowadays diverse world.Anyways, thank you very much for the advice.

Maybe place it in a pdf for controlled printing. I would want to print these and mark 'em up while watching.

You can optimize the .pdf to compete in the SERPs and include a couple links in the pdf to pass back any linkjuice. Heck, slap the transcript in there too. (give it an rel=canonical by htacess if you have concerns about duplicate content)

There are many thing that can improve user experience and
increase conversion rate. The golden rule is “Make your User happy with less
effort”. You have to read user mind on each element of your website so that you
know what user want to do with this particular element it will make UX more attractive.
While researching on UX for my
presentation I encountered with these two posts that I think worthwhile to
share here.

Nice WBF. Thank you Rand for some relevant points connected with embed objects. I recently watched many links achieved via embeding the tweets. While checking the latest achieved links from web master tools spread sheet, I even amazed to get a counted back link from a celebrity's blog. When I checked the blog, I found it was achieved by embedding twitter, there I can find a tweet made by friend (in which the url was included ) re-tweeted and shown in the embed twitter feed.

Even that link was came naturally, I do fear a little bit first. But when I was the page rank of that page, again amazed. I have some doubts still remains in links achieved via embed objects of twitter. After a few more tweets, it the link disappears, is there any value from the next crawl of that page. I want to know about the possibility of any negative problem the link is not there in next crawl. I think It is important that the link need to be there for a long time. Am I correct?

Rand, great tips and yes, i think the still is very useful for those who struggle with your fast visuals....login on web site grabbed me..need to re-think because i really wasn't thinking mobile and that was a big hole i need to shore up...thanks

Thank you Rand, it all seems fairly obvious when you think about it. I personally get infuriated (and other give up) if I have to fill in loads of fields for sign-ups. I think a lot of brands forget the basics such as user experience in favor of collecting as much data as possible.

Wonderful ideas from the Whiteboard, as always. I was particularly struck by what you said regarding outreach emails. I've always felt the pressure of getting an positive response from the people reading my emails. Mostly, this would result in well-crafted but a bit too long emails. Now I feel that I was making a mistake! Will try shorter and simpler emails and see what happens!

Hey Rand, Thanks for the post. This is really a interesting video. I agree with the complete post, but the thing that is bothering me is how would you know what content is good for whom. I am talking about the point number four. I mean to say that the thing which is not of importance for one visitor can be important for the another one. Now, even if we place that thing at the tops, the another user will have to go down the page to find his target content.

I thought this was great. Sometimes I think people online should take a page out of a journalists book. Incorporate the inverted pyramid, where all the important things are at the beginning and all the stuff you don't really care about are at the end. Great ideas and presentation.

Wow... Really impressed. Rand there is only one question that embed code copied from your site added to another site will it display the whole same content on the other site nor not? If yes then would be like copying the original content?Regards,Shehryar

I find I spend way more time on a site that remembers my email and password and if I get asked to many times I get so pissed I may not return there EVER! Sometimes I forget the passwords due to different requirements as far as length ect.

If I am asked to many questions I will get annoyed unless is to protect my money....

I saw the best example of cutting out extra step on a google search the other day.

The search result link had an spot to enter my email to get newsletters I never even had to go to the site.

First, Thanks Rand to share this information. Before implement on these steps we should know our consumer behaviour first. Where and why our visitor quite our site.Some tools can help us to know that where our visitor is clicking, How much time they spending, how much they crawling our page or long content and etc."LuckyOrange""CrazyEgg" and some more are available in market.Yousuf

Great post! Loved the distinction between sending heavy communications to people on your email list that you already 'know' vs. sending GTTP emails to people you are trying to convert in some way, whether it be for lead gen, sales, etc.

While this should be common sense, all to often, things like this become overlooked and overshadowed by one's ambitions. The "I bet I could get WAY more clicks if I _____," can be a very powerful force that leads to unnecessarily complex emails.

Thx again Rand!I´ve been thinking lately, how I can improve my conversions, I was making one or two mistakes, lol. It´s good to see other people's perspective. WBF are always a good way for learning new tricks.Cheers

Using less fields on forms is a great idea. I have often turned away if the site asks for too much info.

I know this is a bit off topic, but I also don't like forms asking for a full birthday, when the year alone should be enough. Feels like they are digging for too much. Following Rands advise I want to be clear with what I want you web designers to do. Please remove the birthday request from your forms. If you are not sending me a b-day present you don't need the day of my birth.

It would be nice if someone created a wordpress plugin that automatically embedded a post on their wordpress site. Also do you think Google+ Communities are a good way to market content? Here's an article we wrote about Google+ http://optimal-marketing.com/blog/using-google-plus-to-promote-your-business-and-you/

You touched upon a couple of the most annoying things I find with websites. The first is confirm password. In the age of mobile first why does this still even exist? The second is sites that frequently log me out. I am not a developer anymore so I am not sure how complex it is to maintain your logged in states between visits. But if Moz and Facebook (is it even possible to log out of Facebook) can do it, then other large sites should be able to do it as well.

Sometimes sign Up forms are so complicated and they want you fill in no-sense data that most of us don't fill them. Name plus email is easy, is simple, why not to do it? So, I absolutely agree with you: as short as better.

Hi Rand! I have learned so much from this Whitebord Friday of yours. I totally like the suggestions you hve share here. I guess I will really need to follow all your suggestons. Kee up the good work! Looking forward for another excellent Whiteboard fridy of yours.

I am a big fan of shorter forms whereby you collect only the information you need. Long forms and people will give up, especially mobile users.

However, I have a number of websites on my portfolio where they will generally only get a one time visit from each user, and have to get collect information (for example loan and mortgage companies). In think a the best choice is a shortened form desktop and tablet, and a super-concise form for mobile.

Certainly for desktop, I have found that having a form that requires users to add more data, changes the user's perception of the website and the request they are making, consequently the user takes the website more seriously, increasing your quality of client.

I never even click videos over 5minutes long anymore and I just watched a freaking 10+ minute video, and I have content A.D.D. great tips about getting to the point! I love that you made me realize I'm stuffing a bunch of me me me into my content and I'm probably loosing people's interest.

"You can collect so much of this data in the application later, as they're using it, if they're actually using it."

Fantastic point! Get real data that you can actually do something with from the people who are your best leads. You don't need to know every single detail about someone the minute they pop up on your radar. Start with the basics and get more information as they get more invested in you.

Nice White Beard Friday (okay, I'm the only person who thinks that's funny). I do appreciate the still image of the whiteboard. This would be a nice addition for many of the future videos.

Rand is right on point with all of these examples. I know in particular that lengthy signup forms and repetitive logins frustrate people. I'm particularly annoyed with e-commerce systems that require you to log in to "purchase" free items.

I'm glad SEOmoz implemented a better sign-on system. I noticed that it works across websites, so when I hop between websites (seomoz.org and opensiteexplorer.org) that I'm still signed in. Would be nice if this single sign-on system were added to getlisted.org.

For #6: I suggest reducing errors with reducing options and smoother copywriting on sign-in landing pages.

For example. Say "Your username or password is incorrect" pops up when a returning user typed the right username with the wrong password. If they have 3 possible usernames and 3 possible passwords, they have 9 possible combinations to sign in successfully...with only 1 of them being correct. They have an 89% chance of making an error to signing in. That's an 11% success rate. Success rates increase when they know their password is wrong in this situation.

Web sites can split the username and password errors so the form would tell users which specific one is wrong. Sites can improve messaging in those errors by linking to an "I Forgot" username or "I Forgot" password form to help them return to your site. This tactic is secure. Username reminder forms state if a username exists so it's still hard for thieves to guess usernames by flooding the form with e-mail addresses and random words.

Another great WBF. Simple and effective one.
The idea of shorter signup form is good. Webmasters also can use the feature of "login with facebook" or "login with twitter". This will make visitors to sign up within couple of clicks, also physiologically make them share your content.

That in itself is not user friendly. Most video players have it visible. I'm not that familiar with Wistia, but it's probably a function SEOMoz can change with their own personal settings. It's important to me as I sometimes have a slow DSL connection. However, I can't recall any buffering/lag issues of late. But then I haven't been around much lately.

Thanks Rand for a great WBF! Shorter sign up forms and more persistent log in's make me happy when online. A simple rule to build by :if it makes your personal experience better, then it likely makes your users experience better.

I think that most of the people designing
and implementing the sign up forms aren’t using mobile devices as much. Would that be too generous of a way to
explain their ignorance, not to mention what they make you go through?

But, to tell you the truth, it doesn’t
really bother me; I write content, I have to have that keyboard. I don’t use mobile devices, but they do make
users savvier. And savvy users expect
quick results, which you can only really deliver if you’re cutting down the
wasted time on unnecessary tasks.

I couldn’t agree more on GTTP as well. I wonder how long the actual “how to get to
the point” articles are. You know there’s
pages of them on Google.

I was just
talking to a guy today in the Netherlands that wants to get his cloud services
website going. I told him one of the
first thing’s we’ve got to focus on is that landing page, and getting it
precise, quick content that doesn’t require a scrollbar. The last thing you want to do is scare your visitors away with a log of jumble and jargon.

Another little thing I've noticed help is having the cursor directly in the first field of a box on a form to fill in, for example, and also eliminating dd/mm/yyyy as soon as you click into that box, rather than having to delete or go through a pop-up calendar (like December birthdays on a post read in January ;o) ) Little things but all in the same global idea of keeping it simple.

Forget about #3 if you're using vBulletin! You'll get so many spam bots signing up. I learned this the hard way.I love #1 "Copied to Clipoard". It's the thought process behind this. Less steps, more conversions.

It's all about "marketing now." The more you make a website about the user end the better your SEO will be. Of course, there are still certain techniques to maintain for SEO that has nothing to do with user end ( H1 tags for example). Visitor oriented SEO is the the now and future.

Just to add to point 6 - if you're keeping people logged in and cookies aren't timing out it makes it easier to garner more information about your visitors, their preferences, their user journey, etc. meaning you can begin to tailor a solution to their needs, requiring their input less often thus simplifying their experience.

Although, ironically, my login timed out whilst I was watching this video.

Thanks Rand for another great WBF. These look like pain points that we can all relate to! By streamlining the user experience we can maximise user interaction and conversions. This can be as involved as UX design & development, or as simple as a well-crafted email or blog post... so something we can all start practicing from today.p.s. The addition of the board image is a great idea!! Hope that continues... I look forward to collecting a whiteboard image library for quick reference :)

I got a great laugh out of the 180 here on outreach emails. Just a few months ago in a Whiteboard Friday, Rand talked about how you need to tell anecdotes, be funny, etc. in your outreach email and only myself and 1 other person disagreed and said they should be straight and to the point. Good to see you've come around to our side!

I think every product manager and "shirt" should HAVE to watch this video. I have to constantly fight with boss to prevent him from adding another paragraph of shite nobody wants to read... or asking another intrusive question...Cheers Rand! Great Job as usual...Michael

Rand, this is a great video, thanks. I definitely had that same thought about shorter, simpler signup forms as I was working my way through local listings on getslisted.com today- definitely hope that more developers take your advice to heart!

Excellent video and attention the intricacies of SEO that can be easy to overlook when it comes to UX. I just don't understand why marketing teams and businesses find it so hard to tap into the mind of users when they become said users themselves after getting up from their desks at 5 o'clock

Yet another brilliantly done WBF. I agree to the GTTP "protocol" that you mentioned.

I've had experiences in which I get emails from people with great headlines which are very catchy. I start with reading the email but get bugged off with the useless content that is written prior to the actual reason they have emailed me.

Keeping you emails (or any other copy) short and to the point helps a lot in getting conversions. Believe me this also helps in creating a good relation with your prospects as you build a trust with them and they are no more the people who first hit the delete button when they see your mail in their inbox.

Thanks Rand for the WBF, you and the guys at Seomoz are doing a great job.

Great WBF Rand and I particularly like your GTTP Content. There are lots of situations online where you see lots of unnecessary "fluff" on webpages which doesn't need to be there and is actually hindering the user experience and conversion rate. A good example is email marketing - often you only have preview pane to get the recipients interest and if this is full of general information, such as about the sender, then they won't even open your email and get to your targeted relevant information in my experience.As Matt says above a great reminder to K.I.S.S.

Taleo based Job applications - I don't know whether others have experienced the same, but I find that it's less motivating to fill those Taleo based Job applications which are about 8-9 steps or more. I have seen substantial difference in no. of applications (while hiring a coder for my past employer) between Taleo (3 applicants) and Indeed Easy Application (20 applicants) within a week.

Overall, there is not even a single point you mentioned, that I (as a basic internet user) can't relate to. There's no rocket science. We just need to think like an end user and use our common sense!

Rand, question on GTTP. As a travel blogger, part of the reason people read about travel are for the stories and personality. If we get to the point quickly, don't we lose a little of why people like to read?For something like tips, I can understand this. However, I still want to infuse my personality into a tips of guides section. Geraldine does this well. What are your thoughts based on the GTTP point that you made?

Part of me thoroughly enjoys Rand talking about once-click embed code when the embed button for the video is the multi-step process he says to avoid. No page is ever perfect, the irony is great though.